Rebellion
by moviemom44
Summary: Bill has always received high marks for sharing and playing well with others, but that was before he met Sookie...An interpretation of the bathtub scene with Bill and Eric in Season 1, Episode 8. NO SLASH!


Author's Note: I do not own these characters. Some dialogue from Season 1, Episode 8, has been lifted verbatim, but the rest is of my own making.

This is my first attempt at a 'True Blood' fic. Essentially, it is my interpretation of the bathtub scene between Bill and Eric from Season 1, Episode 8, and was written mostly as an experiment to see if I could capture Bill's 'voice' and the depth of his devotion to Sookie. Something about the look in Bill's eyes when Eric challenges his 'ownership' of Sookie made me think he wished he could just tell the sheriff to f-off, but his own sense of right and wrong wouldn't let him. I am a very new fan of the show and have only seen Season 1 so far, but couldn't resist skipping ahead and reading the descriptions of all 12 episodes of Season 2 on IMDB. I purely hate the idea of Sookie having anything to do with Eric or any other paranormal for that matter, with the possible exception of her loyal pal Sam. So count me among the 'Bookie' shippers, or whatever y'all call yourselves...

**Rebellion**

**by **

**Moviemom44  
**

I enter the bathroom and see Eric lounging there in my tub. Being Eric, he is incapable of simply knocking at the front door when he wishes to visit. His entrances are always on the grandest of scales.

I watch him swirl his fingers in the clear bath water, his nude body glistening in the candlelight. He knows he is unwelcome, but if I am obliging he will tire of insinuating himself on the willing and leave sooner than if I raise the objection knocking against the backs of my teeth.

This is not the first time Eric has come barging into my home, laying claim to my castle as though it were his own. It has always been thus. His position and his age have always earned him my acquiescence in the past, despite how it might chafe my sensibilities as both a man and a Southerner. My service to the Confederacy is testament to my loathing of interlopers. Were I still an air-breather I would shoot him where he lays. But I am a vampire and an honorable one at that. As such, I pay him the respect due a creature of his station and refrain from hoisting him bodily out of the water and out the window.

"I have a favor to ask," he says, his casual tone at odds with the intensity in his gaze.

In truth, if all Eric wanted was my bathtub or even my entire family estate, I would hand it over gladly. But this time, somehow, I know he has come for more than I am willing to give.

"A favor or an order?" I reply with weary indignation. Eric's 'favors' are almost always thinly disguised orders. Tonight I have no patience for the pretense.

"Depends on how you look at it," he answers truthfully and meets my eyes, pausing for dramatic effect before he says what he really came to say, "Honestly, did you really think you could keep her all to yourself?"

For the briefest moment, I feel a wild rush of rebellion.

_She's mine!_

I will not share Sookie with Eric. His position in our community is high, but he is not the one who made me. I am not compelled to obey him as I must obey Lorena.

Still, it is not my nature to disregard the wishes of my elders. Even in my human life, I earned accolades from teachers and superior officers alike because I knew how to follow orders and did it always without complaint.

But on this I will not—I cannot—bend. Even now I do not completely understand why this one human stirs such possessive passion in me; I only know that she does.

Of all the men she's ever known or ever could know, she chose me—Bill Compton, a vampire—to fulfill her as a woman. She not only knows what I am, but she embraces the truth of it and accepts it not as some novelty or adventure, but as an integral part of her life.

No other human has ever given me the gift of acceptance with such guileless ardor. And now that she has, I cannot imagine living without it, without her.

In a very short time, she has become as necessary to me as blood. I need her. I need to see her and smell her and touch her luscious skin. I need to taste her in all the ways that she will allow me.

But as deeply as I crave her body and all its delights, I also am drawn inexorably to her spirit. I shouldn't be. She is full of light and warmth, two things most of my kind find all but repulsive. But for me, she is a beacon I cannot help but follow in hopes of finding a place where I can truly belong. I have wandered alone in the dark for so long, and I am tired. I ache for the peace I find in her arms. With Sookie, I am home at last.

Eric's brow wrinkles at my lack of response to his challenge. Looking back at him, I do my best to maintain a neutral expression, to reveal nothing of my determination to do exactly what he believes I cannot—keep Sookie all to my self. I will not forfeit her to this necessary evil soaking in my authentic nineteenth-century claw-foot tub.

He has made more than a nuisance of himself this time. He is a threat to the fragile truce I have tried so hard to negotiate between Sookie's world and mine. Of this I am absolutely sure, although he has yet to state his intentions in so many words.

That's when I realize it doesn't matter what he wants; if it involves sharing Sookie in any way, I must dissuade him and failing that, I must refuse him outright. I cannot now, nor will I ever, willingly betray the trust Sookie has placed in me. I will not destroy her belief that our kind are worthy of respect and even love—that I am worthy of her love—by letting Eric or any other creature of the night lay a hand on her.

Now that I have inwardly drawn this line in the sand, I allow myself to appreciate Eric's position as sheriff once again. He is in authority over me and all of us here in this district. His duty is to protect us all from the worst of our kind and he's always done a credible job, even if he has always overvalued his importance while he's at it. Perhaps, this time he will not ask of me what he has in the past. For now, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Sookie is mine because she has chosen to give herself to me—and only me. Until she chooses otherwise, I will protect her with every fiber of my being."

"Yes, Bill, I've no doubt of that. I assure you she has nothing to fear from me. I only wish to have her use her natural talents to help me ferret out a thief at the club."

"I'll present your request to her tonight."

"You will do more than that. You will bring her to the club just after sundown, before we open, so that she can listen to my suspects while I question them."

"Allowing herself to hear others' thoughts is very stressful and unpleasant for her. I won't force her—"

"It didn't seem to bother her when she poked around in everyone's head at the club searching for clues to help her brother. I'm simply asking her to do the very same thing, only with a specific set of suspects, two of them to be exact. It shouldn't take long. You could be in and out in an hour at the most."

"Your own methods of persuasion have been ineffective, I take it?"

"Sadly, yes, which is why I do have to insist upon your cooperation—and hers. I will not be preyed upon, particularly by one of my human employees."

Again, I realize that appeasing him is the only way to get rid of him, so I tell him I will do as he asks. I am sure I can find a way to make this chore as painless for Sookie as possible. And if not, I will do my damnedest to make it up to her in whatever way she chooses. I feel myself growing hard as I envision the possibilities.

"Good. Want to wash my back?" the lanky Swede offers as he leans forward, sponge in hand, gesturing over his shoulder.

"Not particularly, but if it will get you out of my tub that much faster—"

"Ah, then it isn't me who has you all…atwitter?"

"You have never had that effect on me, Eric, and you know it."

"Yes, but a man can dream, can't he?"

Vampires as a species are notoriously bi-sexual, or rather simply sexual. When the need arises, and it does with great regularity for most of us, we are not especially selective in our choice of partners. Whoever is handy will usually do just fine, so I take no particular exception to Eric's blatant pass at me. He is merely picking up on the signals my thoughts of Sookie have generated.

There was a time when I would have taken up such a proposition with great gusto, but those days were long over before I ever met Eric, a fact he laments every time he sees me.

Having lost my human life largely because of my insistence on being faithful to my wife, after I was turned, I was, predictably, just the opposite, fucking everything capable of accepting my swollen member into any orifice--male, female, human or vampire; it made no difference. For a time in my vampire youth, about the first fifty years or so, I was as voracious in my sexual appetites as in my blood lust, falling into liaisons with male and female alike with equal enthusiasm.

I did, however, draw the line at children and four-legged creatures. With a seemingly endless supply of living and dead adults at my disposal, I saw no need to venture into either the playground or the barnyard looking for a good time.

But eventually I came to understand that my basic personal nature was really still the same as it was during my human existence and that I had pursued my earlier course for the same reason a cat licks its own privates—because it can. In fact, I did not enjoy being with men, or even with multiple female partners for that matter. Nor did I like the person I had become in order to indulge my more prurient inclinations, so I stopped.

Apparently, you can suck the blood out of the monogamous, but you can't suck the monogamy out of the blood—at least not forever. I reasoned that if I was going to live forever, I had better at least make an attempt to respect the man staring back at me in the mirror every night, or it was going to be a very long and miserable existence indeed.

Glancing at my reflection in the mirror above the sink, I am reminded of the last time I occupied my own bathtub and with whom. Sookie asked me about the various myths involving vampires, including the one that says we have no reflection. I told her the truth about all of them, primarily that they were started by our kind in an effort to confuse people about our true capabilities and weaknesses.

I can still smell the gardenia scented bubbles we played in that night, still feel the warm flesh of Sookie's breasts soft and slippery in my hands. If I had a pulse, it would be racing.

The desire to flee from Eric's presence and run to her is overwhelming, but I am nothing if not a gentleman and it would be rude to vanish without taking my proper leave.

"If there's nothing else, I'll be going now. As you found your way in on your own, I assume you can show yourself out?" I pin him with a pointed stare, letting him know I do not appreciate his unannounced intrusion.

His smirk tells me my disapproval is wasted on him, cancelled out by my long history of obedience to him and the laws of our kind.

Closing his eyes and resting his head on the edge of the tub, he makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing me out of my own home. I couldn't care less. He can have the whole damn place and everything in it.

But Sookie is mine—and she is waiting…

THE END


End file.
